


stand up before I drag you down

by cygnes



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Abuse, F/F, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23236912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: By the time they get to Derry, Eddie isn't wearing his wedding ring and Bev isn't answering her phone.(Or: an AU where Bev & Eddie have each other's terrible marriages.)
Relationships: Beverly Marsh/Myra Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak & Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Tom Rogan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 80





	stand up before I drag you down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](https://derrykink.dreamwidth.org/1225.html?thread=91081#cmt91081) on the kink meme.
> 
> Big ups to [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka) and [plutonianshores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores) for taking a look at this before I posted it. 
> 
> Content warnings in endnote.

“I’m worried about you,” Myra says. 

“I know,” Beverly says, because she’s tired of saying _you don’t have to be_ every single time. “Listen, I’m almost at work. I’ll see you tonight, okay?” She wants to hang up, but if she does, it’ll be at least a week before Myra lets that go. The building really is right across the street; she’ll have an excuse to end the call once she’s inside.

“Assuming you don’t forget our dinner date,” Myra says. Even over the phone, her annoyance is clear. 

“It was _one time_ ,” Beverly says. She hopes her rising frustration is just as clear. She was the one who made the reservation; she was the one who put it on their shared calendar, the way Myra likes. 

“I just know how you get when you have a show coming up,” Myra says. “Even when you don’t forget, you’re not really there with me.” Beverly bites back a sigh. “I know, I _know_ , you make more money, you’re the famous designer, but —”

“Come on, Myra, let’s not do this,” Beverly says. “It’s not about money.” It’s about emotional investment in something other than their relationship, which is about a thousand times worse. An incoming call saves her from having a fight on the phone in public and looking like a crazy person. “I have a call on the other line. I’ll give you a call after I meet with the head draper, okay?” 

“I love you,” Myra says, accusingly. 

“Yeah,” Beverly says. “You too.” It’s hard to tell Myra _I love you_ these days and mean it. She finds ways around having to say it because she doesn’t have the energy to argue all the time. 

Then she picks up the other call, which is a guy named Mike. (Mike Hanlon, from Derry — how could she have forgotten him? How could she have forgotten any of them?) Beverly almost walks into traffic as the memories rush back. She’s definitely going to miss dinner with Myra tonight, but suddenly, that doesn’t seem like such a huge problem. Multiple murders and a childhood blood oath have a way of putting things in perspective. 

Myra will answer if Beverly calls her right back on her cell. But Myra’s working remotely today, sitting in their home office among her scented candles and ugly ceramic animals. Beverly can call her office, leave a message at work, and deal with the fallout later. She dials Myra’s extension. _Myra Marsh_ , the voicemail chirps; Beverly hates that Myra took her last name, even though she agreed to it. For one thing, Myra’s married name sounds like a goddamn Archie comics character. For another, it’s hard enough for Beverly to feel like she owns her family name. She’s still reclaiming it for herself, and now she has the pressure of someone else carrying it, too, not even knowing how dirty it is. There are some things Beverly and Myra don’t discuss, and that includes pretty much Beverly’s entire life before she went to FIT. 

“Hey, Myra. Listen. I just got some bad news from an old friend. Kind of an emergency. I’m flying back east for… a few days, at least. I’ll call you when I get settled.” Or maybe, Beverly thinks, she’ll forget; seems like she’s pretty good at that.

\---

Eddie has become a very light sleeper since he went off his sleeping pills. The phone’s vibration wakes him on the first ring, and he mutes it before getting up and heading to the next room to take the call. 

“Who the hell is this?” he says. The number on the screen isn’t in his contacts. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Eddie, it’s Mike,” the man on the other end of the line says. For a hysterical, stupid moment, Eddie thinks this is some kind of test. Then the man says, “Mike Hanlon? From Derry? We grew up together.” Everything starts to click into place, filling in a gap he hadn’t let himself realize was there. 

“Mike,” Eddie breathes. “Jesus. How long has it been?” 

“Over twenty years,” Mike says grimly. “It’s back, Eddie. You remember the promise we all made?” The heel of Eddie’s palm throbs. He only half-remembers. It’s coming to him in bits and pieces now. “Me and you and Bill, Stan, Bev, Ben, Richie…” 

“Richie,” Eddie repeats absently, rubbing at his hand and frowning. He remembers them all in bits and pieces. A flash of dark skin, red hair, glasses. Half a dozen mismatched smiles.

“IT’s back, Eddie,” Mike says, with different emphasis, and a shudder rolls down Eddie’s spine. His chest feels tight. He doesn’t know why.

“I’ll be there,” Eddie says, and hangs up. He drags the small suitcase he uses for business trips out of the bottom of the closet and winces when its casing drags audibly against the hardwood. Tom’s a heavier sleeper, though. Eddie throws clothes into the suitcase haphazardly, promising himself that he’ll repack it later when he can turn on a goddamn light and see well enough to organize everything. Any other time, he’d be annoyed at himself for forgetting to take his toiletry kit out of the suitcase last time he unpacked. Now it’s an unexpected blessing to find it still there. 

“Going somewhere?” Tom says from behind him. From _way too close_ behind him. Fuck, but he can be quiet for a big guy. 

“It’s an emergency,” Eddie says. He stands up and turns around, because he’s not about to have this conversation cringing on the floor. “Some old friends of mine, from Maine. Something happened —” 

“Eddie,” Tom says. He cups Eddie’s cheek with one hand. Even in the dark, Eddie’s sure his smile is condescending. “You know you can’t lie to me, right?”

“I’m not lying,” Eddie says. “Why the hell would I lie about that? You think I _want_ to go back to Maine?” 

“I don’t think anything about Maine because I know that’s not where you’re going,” Tom says. “I heard you saying men’s names. Mike.” He draws his hand back and slaps Eddie lightly on the cheek. “Richie.” Again, just enough to sting. Eddie takes a step back, and Tom’s other hand comes up to grip the back of his neck. “Cheating on me with one man not enough now?” 

“I’ve never cheated on you,” Eddie says through gritted teeth. “Though god knows I should have by now.” They’ve had this argument before. The first time they had it, Eddie had to call in sick and then work from home for a few days. He knows to expect the backhand that makes spots dance black and white at the edge of his field of vision. (For some reason, that makes him feel sick now in a way it never has before.) 

It’s not always like this. Sometimes they just argue, and when they’re fighting with words, Eddie can give as good as he gets. Sometimes Eddie can see Tom’s bad moods coming on and makes the conscious decision to either agree with whatever bullshit Tom says, or distract him with sex, which works about 70% of the time. Eddie has, in fact, run the numbers on that. He’s also familiar with the statistics on partner violence and correlation with homicide, but he’s fairly confident he can keep it from getting anywhere near that dire. 

He’s slightly less confident when Tom picks up his belt from where it’s draped over the back of a chair. All his clothes for tomorrow laid out, and Eddie’s, too, on the other chair — part of their nighttime ritual, good-naturedly poking fun at each other’s tie choices. It’s not all bad; it can’t be all bad, or Eddie would have left a long time ago. He gets his forearms up in time to block the belt from hitting him in the fucking _face_ , Jesus _Christ_ , and scrambles back on the bed to get away. Tom tosses the belt aside and crawls after him, muttering darkly about what Eddie was planning to do with Mike and Richie, and Eddie brings his knee up hard between Tom’s legs. He heaves himself off the bed, crouching on the floor and feeling around for his suitcase. He finds the handle and stands. Tom’s starting to get up. For good measure, Eddie throws the lamp from the bedside table at his head. He hears it break, hears Tom groan wordlessly, and doesn’t look back. 

Eddie’s in the car with the engine running before he realizes that he’s not wearing shoes. He rests his forehead on the steering wheel and laughs breathlessly for a solid ten seconds before he pulls out of the driveway. It’s fine, really; he has his gym bag in the trunk and there are sneakers in there, and his old friends (who he’s already thinking of as losers, which seems meaner than necessary) don’t know he only wears sneakers when he’s working out. He’s going to have to stop at a rest stop somewhere on the drive up and get dressed anyway. Maybe he’ll take the ferry up to New London and give himself a chance to sleep on the way, even though it’s slower. He thinks about tossing his wedding ring in the Long Island Sound and bares his teeth in something like a smile.

\---

By the time she gets off her flight, Beverly has thirty-two texts and six voicemails from Myra. She turns her phone off and puts it back in her purse. In the rental car on the drive from Portland International, she listens to the radio. The reception isn’t good — a sermon keeps fading in over the classic rock station she picked — but it’s not a long drive. 

She wonders whether, maybe, this will be what finally gets Myra to divorce her. Not that she’s been trying to make that happen, exactly, but Myra has made tearful threats to _leave_ during more than one argument and never followed through. Beverly can’t ever seem to get as far as threatening because she knows that Myra means it when she says she wants the best for them both. Even if Myra’s idea of ‘best’ doesn’t line up with Beverly’s own, she’s trying. Beverly can’t be the one to leave because she doesn’t have the right; she’s the one at fault, the one who’s checked out, the one who doesn’t care enough.

Jade of the Orient looks like it hasn’t been remodeled since about 1990, though Beverly never actually went there when she lived in Derry. It was way too expensive. Jade of the Orient was where families who lived in nice houses took their out-of-town relatives when they came for a visit. Which, in a way, is close to what’s happening now. A car door slams behind Beverly as she stands outside the entrance, and she turns. It takes her a moment to place the man walking toward her, but then he smiles, and she knows that smile, the soft curve of his cheeks pushing up under his eyes, even though those cheeks are set in a narrower face now. 

“Beverly Marsh?” he says.

“Ben?” she says back. His smile grows. 

“Richie,” says a voice from further down the sidewalk. They both look over. “What, are we not doing the Rocky Horror thing?” Richie reaches up to adjust his glasses, though he doesn’t actually seem to move them that much. “Jesus, look at you two. You’re so hot. What the hell happened to me?”

“You grew into your looks,” Beverly says, the words coming back to her automatically in the moment before the memory does. 

“Yikes,” Richie says, as though he doesn’t remember. And maybe he doesn’t, not yet. “Good effort, though. Very diplomatic. I’m going to console myself by eating my weight in egg rolls.” He nudges Ben with an elbow and pats Beverly on the shoulder as he passes them. There’s something a little off about his breeziness, but people deal with stress differently. 

The hostess leads them to a private room when they give her Mike’s name. Beverly knows the three men already there without having to think about it. Just seeing them, it clicks into place: Eddie, Mike, Bill. She’d somehow assumed Bill would still be the tallest of them, and couldn’t have been more wrong; he must’ve hit his growth spurt early, same as her. Mike is movie-star handsome, and his steadiness seems as affected as Richie’s carelessness. Eddie smiles fleetingly at them but mostly looks tired. He doesn’t flinch, but he goes still when Ben hugs him. Makes a little sound, pained or embarrassed, when Richie follows suit. Beverly opts for a cheek kiss instead. 

For a little while, she pretends to forget why they’ve all reunited. They debate the merits of appetizers and give up on waiting for Stan to get there before ordering. Then comes the business of catching up. 

“So, obviously we all know what you two have been doing,” Richie says, gesturing at Bill and Beverly, “and we know what I’ve been doing, what with the fame and fortune and all. What about you, Haystack? Modeling underwear? Because, it bears repeating, you got super hot, dude.”

“Architecture,” Ben says. “A lot of office buildings, corporate spaces. A few private homes, a few museums. The new wing on the Stewart Gardner in Boston…” He trails off, smiling sheepishly. “I don’t know, people like it. I’ve done pretty well.” 

“What do you have going here in Derry, Mike?” Richie says. He raises his eyebrows. “Modeling underwear?” 

“Pretty close,” Mike says. “I’m head reference librarian. Only full-time reference librarian, actually; our other full-timer splits her shifts between the reference desk and children’s programming.” 

“So you’re six months in every year’s fundraising pin-up calendar, got it,” Richie says. Mike laughs good-naturedly. 

“Oh, you know it,” he says. “How’d you think I got the big bucks to take you guys out to a place like this?” 

“Fuck off, you’re not paying for this whole meal,” Eddie says. “I think we ordered everything on the menu.” He smiles slightly and nods at Richie. “You’ve got that Hollywood money now, right? You can chip in.”

“Let’s not forget about Bill’s sweet, sweet royalties,” Richie says. “And don’t think you’re getting out of answering — just what the hell do you do to make _your_ big bucks, Eds? I’m going to assume, no offense, it’s _not_ underwear modeling.” 

“Yeah, thanks, asshole, I haven’t seen you doing any shirtless photoshoots,” Eddie says. “I’m a risk analyst.” 

“Exactly how many of my photoshoots have you seen?” Richie says, eyebrows shooting up. 

“Let me think: how many doctor’s office waiting rooms have I been in lately?” Eddie says. “God knows that’s the only time I read any of the magazines you’re profiled in.”

“So, like, all of them,” Richie guesses. Bill laughs with his mouth half-full of water and takes a minute to struggle not to either spit it out or choke. 

“Fuck _you_ , man, I can guarantee I’m in better shape than you are,” Eddie says. 

“Okay, okay,” Bill cuts in. “I have to ask — I can’t be the only one who’s married, right?”

“I am,” Beverly says, and hopes this will be a short conversation. 

“Me too,” Eddie says. He looks about as eager to discuss it as she does. 

“Wait, no shit?” Richie says. “You got married? To a woman?”

“To a man, actually,” Eddie says. Richie does a full-on spit take, thankfully back into his own glass. 

“I’m married to a woman,” Beverly adds, and raises her glass to Eddie. He tips his glass toward her in return. She wonders if her smile matches his in bitterness. 

“Damn, I think that’s enough to qualify Derry for a pride parade,” Richie says. 

“Beep beep, man,” Ben says. 

“I just meant, like… it’s supposed to be, what, ten percent of the whole population, right? And Derry’s got a population of maybe twelve people, on a good day, during tourist season,” Richie says. “I wasn’t trying to be an asshole here.”

“That’d be a change of pace,” Eddie says. He glances sidelong at Richie. Beverly is concerned for the structural integrity of his glass, given how tightly he’s gripping it. “Have any of you guys seen his stand-up? It’s fucking _vile_.” 

“Hey,” Richie says, frowning. 

“What, you think gay people don’t watch late night TV? I have insomnia,” Eddie says, before Richie can make some smart-ass comment about Eddie being familiar with both his stand-up and magazine profiles. “Nightmares. Probably from the motherfucking hate-infested cesspool we all grew up in. Did you guys hear about Adrian Mellon?”

“Yeah,” Beverly says. Her throat feels tight. She’d heard about it through the LGBT groups she follows on Twitter. Not the big news networks, though. God fucking forbid they talk about anything except the farce of a presidential campaign going on. 

“About that —” Mike starts. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie cuts in. Mike stops short at his tone. There’s something raw there, Beverly can hear it; like he doesn’t just mean it, but like he’s hurt, too. “I know it’s not a good excuse, but I don’t actually write most of my own stuff.” 

“If you really want to apologize, you should give me and Bev a dollar for every shitty joke you’ve told about gay people in the past twenty years.” Eddie meets her gaze across the table again. “Bev, prepare to add another million to that fashion fortune.” She chuckles a little, more in acknowledgment than because it’s funny. 

It takes another twenty minutes for Mike to bring up Adrian Mellon again, and all hell breaks loose shortly thereafter. None of that is enough to keep her from noticing how Ben has stopped leaning in so much, stopped angling himself toward her like a flower following the sun. Well, that’s fine, she tells herself. She shouldn’t have even noticed it in the first place. She’s married. She’s _married_. 

\---

Eddie trails after Beverly when they go back to the Town House. Richie’s determined to leave; fine, he can go fuck himself. Eddie doesn’t particularly want to stay, either, especially after the news about Stan, but it’s not like he has a home to run back to. He decided on the drive up that he isn’t going back to Tom. If the only immediate alternative is trying to kill a child-eating shapeshifting evil clown that lives in the sewers, well. That’s what he’s got. 

It’s possible that he’s not thinking straight. He could blame that on the booze or coming down from the adrenaline rush of the drive up to Maine. What he _can’t_ blame on the booze is hearing Beverly preempt Stan’s wife on the phone about how he died. But that quickly becomes a secondary concern when Beverly swings around the other side of the unmanned bar. 

“Do you really think we need… more?” Eddie says. 

“We just found out Stan committed suicide,” Beverly says. 

“ _I_ just found out Stan committed suicide. It sounds like that wasn’t news to you,” Eddie says. Beverly pours herself a finger of whiskey, slugs it back, refills it, and sets another glass on the bar. She pours a finger into the second glass and slides it across to him. “Oh, what the fuck, why not,” he says, and picks it up. Beverly comes back around the bar and sits down in one of the armchairs nearby. Eddie sits across from her. “What are we doing?”

“Gay Losers think tank,” Bev says. “I’m bisexual, actually, but. You know.” There’s something hard-edged about her, sharp. Eddie wonders if he’s equally transparent — if he looks as brittle as he feels right now. 

“Yeah, cheers to getting the hell out of Derry before we figured that out,” Eddie says, lifting his glass. “Speaking for myself, at least.” 

“I was in Portland by the time I understood how I felt,” Beverly says. “I don’t know. Junior year, maybe?”

“I was in college,” Eddie says. Then, more honestly, he amends: “Grad school. It’s where I met Tom. He’s in finance.” 

“I met Myra in college, though she was at NYU and I was at FIT,” Beverly says. “We didn’t get together until a little later, though. We’re out in Chicago now.” 

“What’s she like?” Eddie says, because he doesn’t want to talk about Tom. 

“She’s… a lot,” Beverly says, and sighs. She passes a hand over her eyes. “No, she just. She wants to look after me a little more than I need looking after. I liked that about her, at first.” 

“And you can’t fucking _tell_ anyone that your marriage is shit because your marriage is the stand-in for Gay Marriage as an institution, right?” Eddie says. “God, I hate that.” He sips the whiskey. Mid-shelf, nothing to write home about. 

“What’s Tom’s damage?” Beverly says. Eddie debates a moment whether to tell her. He’s going to sound like an idiot, a liar. A loser. At least he’s in good company. 

“He gave me a concussion last year,” Eddie says. “Bounced my head off the tile in the master bath.” Beverly looks up. 

“Jesus,” she says. “Are you okay?” 

“Things just got out of hand,” Eddie says. He takes another sip. “He’s not always like that. Usually when he gets jealous. I liked that at first, too, because it meant he wanted me enough to fight for it.” 

“Myra only stopped accusing me of having affairs when I gave her all my passwords,” Beverly says. “She checks my email, my messages. I think she tracks my phone’s location, too. Sometimes —” Beverly pauses, sips her whiskey. “Sometimes I think she wants me to be worse than I am, so she can feel martyred. Does that sound crazy?”

“No,” Eddie says. “Then she guilt trips you, right? And even if you didn’t really do anything wrong, you have to apologize, because you love her, and admitting guilt is what will make her stop hurting.” 

“Tom, too?” Beverly says. Eddie shakes his head. 

“My mom was like that, when I was growing up. It does make you feel crazy, but it’s not you.” Eddie sets the glass down on a side table and laces his hands together. He hasn’t taken his jacket off all night. All three of the shirts he’d grabbed in the dark were short-sleeved. “I was so fucking glad to get away from her. I still feel bad saying it, but it’s true. I loved her and I hated her.” 

“I hate Myra sometimes,” Beverly admits quietly. “But I’m not scared of her. I know she wouldn’t hurt me. And if I have to pick…” There are things they’ve never really talked about but all sort of know, and what Beverly’s dad did to her is one of them. In the haze of nightmare memory, he knows Pennywise turned into Beverly’s dad, and that was what scared her when nothing else It turned into could. 

“We shouldn’t have to pick,” Eddie says. “Most people don’t.” He looks at his hands, rubs a thumb over the scar on his palm. “I don’t even know if I’m scared of Tom, most of the time. I’m just so _angry_.” At Tom, at himself. Mostly at himself. 

“Myra’s not a bad person,” Beverly says. “We’re just bad for each other and it took us too long to realize. We were already in a civil union when marriage was legalized, and neither of us were ready to split, so...”

“Tom probably is a bad person,” Eddie says. He thinks maybe he is, too. Beverly laughs mirthlessly. “But he helped me, in the beginning, when I was figuring things out about myself. And he got me to see that I wasn’t sick, got me back off all the medications I didn’t need.” He’d been insistent about Eddie staying on the sleeping pills, but Eddie went off those, too, once he’d figured out why Tom liked him to take them. He’d rather be fully awake for sex, even if it wasn’t sex he especially enjoyed. “We got married as soon as it was legal in New York. Coming up on five years ago now. It wasn’t like I didn’t _know_ by then.” 

“It takes more than just knowing,” Beverly says. She rests one hand on top of both of his. 

“I’m not going back,” Eddie says. Tom likes to remind Eddie that he has no one else. All his friends are Tom’s friends, too, and who’d side with Eddie if it came down to that? And his family’s dead, he’s not close to his coworkers. Now he knows he isn’t alone, though. He has the Losers. Provided they survive. 

“I’m not sure I want to go back, either,” Beverly says. 

“So we get divorced,” Eddie says, as though it’s that easy. For her, for now, he can pretend it is. “We get divorced, we move in together, it’s like a shitty sitcom. Beverly Marsh, will you make me the happiest divorcé in New York and be my roommate?” Beverly snorts a laugh, unbecoming and unselfconscious. 

“I did like New York when I lived there,” she says. She takes her hand back and rubs a fingertip around the edge of her glass, now empty. “Maybe FIT would let me teach a couple classes.”

“They’d be lucky to have you,” Eddie says. He looks back at her. They share a smile.

“Or there’s Boston, for a fresh start for both of us,” she says, kind enough not to say _if you need to be further away from Tom_. “Good museums.”

“We could take a look at Ben’s new wing on the Isabella Stewart Gardner,” Eddie says. 

“Ben,” Beverly echoes, and sets her glass down. She draws her legs up on the chair underneath her. 

“Ben?” Eddie says. She shakes her head. 

“It’s stupid,” Beverly says. “Selfish.”

“Tell me anyway, since we’re spilling our guts,” Eddie says. 

“I didn’t notice how much attention he was paying me until he stopped,” she says. “I want it back. Which is — it’s stupid, right? I’m married.” She says it like she’s said it before, like she’s repeating something she’s said a lot. Maybe she’s been saying it to herself all night. Maybe for years, every time she wanted something her wife didn’t. Eddie knows what that’s like.

“You’re married and you want to get a divorce,” Eddie says. “I think you’re allowed to think about the future.” 

“So are you,” Beverly says, and Eddie looks back down at his hands. Tom is the first and only man he’s ever been in a relationship with. He wouldn’t know what else to want. He can cross that bridge once he’s sure he _has_ a future. 

\---

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Eddie says, staring down into the open hatch. 

“Well, I just almost drowned,” Beverly says. “If I can do it, anyone can.” She’s wet and filthy and disgusting and really, really not at her most patient. 

“Sorry,” Eddie says, responding automatically, thoughtlessly. Then he says, “But you didn’t see me in there. I didn’t — I couldn’t _move_. Richie could have died and I didn’t do _anything_ , I just stood there, what the fuck _good_ am I to the group if I’m this much of a coward?” He’s shaking, she realizes, and then she understands that this isn’t just about whatever happened in the Neibolt house. 

“Eddie, look at me,” Beverly says, and he does. “You did this once before, and with a broken arm. Henry Bowers stabbed you in the face and you took that knife out of your face and stabbed him right back. You left your shitty husband after, what, a decade?” Eddie shrugs. “You’re one of the bravest people I know, and we’re going to _end this_.” 

“You’re definitely the bravest person I know, so I’ll take your word for it.” Eddie smiles shakily. “Can I ask you a favor?” 

“Sure,” Beverly says, mostly because this conversation needs to end so they can get this whole thing over with. They can have another heart-to-heart later. Now is not the time. 

“If anything happens to me, see if you can frame Tom for it,” Eddie says, and descends into the open maw of the caravan. The beam of his headlamp rolls over his wrist where his sweatshirt has slipped down. She can see the edge of a purple-red welt. 

“I’ll frame that bastard for killing Princess Diana and the Lindbergh baby, too,” Beverly says. Eddie’s laugh echoes down into the darkness, and she follows after.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for depictions of emotional and physical abuse, plus discussion of sexual abuse and homophobia. 
> 
> According to taste, you may imagine that this continues (in a more angst-ridden vein) with Bev getting the Losers to help her _Gone Girl_ Tom after Eddie dies by spiderclown impalement or (more optimistically) with the Hot Divorced Roommate Dramedy in which Bev has to relearn what communication looks like when it's not based on manipulation and passive-aggression and Eddie has to figure out what he wants out of a future relationship with a partner who isn't, you know, totally the worst.
> 
> Title from ["Bleed Magic"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Bf8Qhe59U) by I Don't Know How But They Found Me. Also, apologies to the architect Renzo Piano, who actually designed the new wing on the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum a few years back.


End file.
